Chapter 596

The refinement path Gu Masters move into formation with solemn expressions, and grey light gradually blossoms and merges into one. Before everyone’s expectant gaze, Hei Lou Lan waves his hand and throws his two-edge owner token into the air. The token floats in midair as the condensed grey radiance shoots toward it, too dazzling to look at directly. Fang Yuan, watching from outside, decides this is the moment and acts. ^{ch. 596}

The owner token vanishes and lands in his hand the next moment. Because Fang Yuan controls this floor, teleporting a small token is effortless for him. Without the token the grey radiance collapses at once, and the killer move grey meltdown forcibly ends. Nearly every refinement path Gu Master in the round formation gives a frightened howl and spits blood from the backlash. Hei Lou Lan, at the center of the formation, is no exception, spitting blood and staggering back several steps. ^{ch. 596}

He loses his composure and cries out over the lost token, his voice shocked, angry and doubting. Everyone else is stupefied too: Sun Shi Han is baffled, Tang Miao Ming covers her mouth, and Pei Yan Fei looks despondent. Inside Fang Yuan’s mind, Mo Yao’s will rants that Hei Lou Lan’s token now holds no more than two edges, which with Fang Yuan’s own six edges makes only eight, and asks why he did not wait for it to reach four edges. Fang Yuan sneers at her and calmly hides the two-edge token under his sleeve. The whole exchange happens in front of every onlooker, yet raises no suspicion at all. ^{ch. 596}

Ye Lui Sang rushes over and asks where the owner token has gone. Hei Lou Lan shouts back that he has no idea, cursing in fury. In all recorded history, an owner token had never simply disappeared before. Grey meltdown has been used many times by the great forces and past winners, and it had never failed this way. Fang Yuan hurries over too, his brows furrowed in a genuine looking anxious expression that draws others’ sympathy. The killer move everyone had pinned their hopes on has failed at the critical moment, and the token is inexplicably gone. ^{ch. 596}

The green vines’ assault grows fiercer still, giving no one time to recover. Morale collapses further and many Gu Masters flee in disorder. Xi Xue mumbles that it is over, that they are done for, and Tai Bai Yun Sheng, worn thin by his own guilty conscience in recent times, laughs bitterly and wonders if he will die here. Then someone shouts in joy that they can leave. ^{ch. 596}

Fang Yuan has left a lifeline rather than wipe out everyone at once, allowing Gu Masters to freely enter and exit this floor. Wiping out Hei tribe entirely would draw the all out revenge of Hei tribe’s Gu Immortals against him. He also still needs Tai Bai Yun Sheng to refine landscape as before Gu. So the collapsed, despairing army retreats. ^{ch. 596}

The plaza around True Yang Building becomes a scene of gloomy misery, filled with survivors’ grief and relief. Hei Lou Lan had entered the tower with a grand, vigorous army, and the change in him leaving it stuns almost everyone. His expression is ashen as he glances once at the plaza and leaves without a word, his tribesmen following silently with heads lowered. Ye Lui Sang sighs and shakes his head before leaving as well. ^{ch. 596}

Tai Bai Yun Sheng predicts it will be difficult for Hei Lou Lan to form a presentable army again soon. He is wrong. The very next day, Hei Lou Lan forms another large army and attacks the second round again. Losing the owner token does not stop him, since even without grey meltdown he can force the round through with brute strength. He had already deceived two great Gu Immortals with his pledge of revenge, and cannot turn back now. ^{ch. 596}

That night, after the defeat, Fang Yuan slips into Eighty-Eight True Yang Building unseen. Mo Yao sneers in his mind that he is too impatient, that he now holds only eight edges, and asks what he thinks he can do with that. Fang Yuan walks slowly along the secret treasury corridor, gently touching the crystal wall as treasure after treasure sweeps past his gaze. He replies calmly, addressing her as a refinement path grandmaster and a fairy of Spirit Affinity House, and asks why she probes so indirectly instead of speaking plainly. Mo Yao’s expression changes and she smiles coquettishly, calling him “Young man” and remarking that he already seems to have a plan. ^{ch. 596}

He confirms it plainly. He pauses his steps, strokes the right crystal wall and takes out a treasure stored within. Ever since refining the guest halt stele, he can take out any treasure within this distance. He walks on and takes out three Gu worms, then moves to the left wall and takes out more. In all, he draws out tens of Gu recipes, over a hundred Gu worms, assorted inheritance information and over twenty documents of cultivation insights. He keeps about eighty of the Gu worms outside and sends the rest into storage Gu worms. Mo Yao watches the whole process, growing more curious, unable to see what pattern connects Gu worms that do not seem to match at all. ^{ch. 596}

A memory from his previous life rises in his mind: a vision of eleven Gu Immortals from Central Continent attacking Imperial Court blessed land. They were eleven men and women, and their leader was a female immortal whose domineering aura pressured everyone near her, while the other Gu Immortals stayed cautious and respectful toward her. She was named Fairy Black Moon, a half mask covering her nose, mouth and cheeks and leaving only the upper half of her face visible, with sharp long brows, bright eyes and a heroic aura, beneath a dark gold armor that pressed on any onlooker. Fang Yuan’s current actions replicate hers down to the smallest detail. The treasures he is taking out carry great history: countless years ago, Central Continent’s Gu Immortals sent outstanding Gu Masters to infiltrate Northern Plains, passing rounds with high grade evaluation and arranging these treasures inside the treasure room. That whole process took close to a millennium. ^{ch. 596}

Fang Yuan walks past the guest halt stele and over three hundred steps further into the long crystal corridor before stopping. Confirming the spot, he begins placing the Gu worms he collected into the crystal wall, left and right, above and below his feet, in a set pattern. Among the original treasures already in the wall, he keeps some and removes some. He shifts the position of others. Mo Yao watches carefully, drawing on her own refinement path grandmaster skill, and grows bewildered as she starts to infer his purpose. Within a range of tens of steps, his adjustments make the Gu worms in the wall ingeniously form a shape. ^{ch. 596}

Fang Yuan names it the refinement path killer move grey meltdown. More exactly, he calls it a killer move descended from grey meltdown but far stronger in effect. When Mo Yao asks what he means to do, he only tells her, smiling with confidence, to watch. He sends several Gu worms floating into the air, and the Gu worms set into the walls begin to shake, raising dust that thickens into a grey fog. ^{ch. 596}

The fog keeps thickening until it submerges Fang Yuan completely, hiding even his own hands from his sight. Standing inside it with his eyes closed, his right hand clutching his six-edge owner token, he reaches out to sense something carefully. He suddenly opens his eyes and calls out for Fixed Immortal Travel to come back. The crystal corridor shakes hard and Eighty-Eight True Yang Building trembles with it. ^{ch. 596}

The twenty-first floor, with seventeen rounds still remaining on it, disintegrates into nothing. The rewards for those seventeen rounds pass through space and appear before Fang Yuan. Among them is a Gu giving off a rank six aura, its green gem like luster flying elegantly like a jade butterfly and pushing the other Gu worms aside. It is the Immortal Gu Fixed Immortal Travel, and Mo Yao blurts out its name in shock. ^{ch. 596}

Fang Yuan stores the other rewards into storage Gu worms and keeps Fixed Immortal Travel outside, resting on his shoulder. It is a rank six Gu at its peak state, too large for his mortal aperture to hold. He has also kept the flying bear phantom Gu unstored, holding it directly in his pocket instead. He says there is one more, licking his lips in excitement. ^{ch. 596}

Another explosive sound rings out as Eighty-Eight True Yang Building shakes greatly, and the twelve remaining rounds of the thirty-fourth floor are immediately passed. The rewards appear before him again, one of them an Immortal Gu that looks like nothing more than a lump of earth. Mo Yao’s will blurts out its name: Immortal Gu Gruel Mud. Fang Yuan laughs, stores the rest of the rewards, and keeps Gruel Mud in his pouch. ^{ch. 596}

Fang Yuan had buried both Fixed Immortal Travel and Gruel Mud deep underground long before, waiting for exactly this moment. The tower’s condensation had plundered every corner of Northern Plains as it formed, an arrangement by an Immortal Venerable whose reach ran from the heavens to the abyss and could not be stopped. Wooden Chicken, an Immortal Gu that had dodged both Xue Song Zi and Hei Bai in the chase against it, fell into the tower’s grip all the same. Fang Yuan’s own carefully buried Immortal Gu offered no resistance at all and were gathered in by the tower just as naturally. Afterward they were placed as the last rewards of the twenty-first and thirty-fourth floors. Because Giant Sun’s will has lain in hibernation, both Immortal Gu had stayed half-refined all along, exactly as Fang Yuan had planned. Seeing all this, Mo Yao cannot hold back and demands to know who Fang Yuan really is, what region he comes from and which force sent him. ^{ch. 596}